


Glitch

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: Androids, Backstory, Big Bang Challenge, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kid Fic, Post-Apocalypse, Slash Goggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4434251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gerard glanced around the playroom with a frown. Something was off. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something wrong about this room. It wasn't even that the room had changed, because to his eyes it didn't appear to have. Perhaps he was the one who had changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glitch

**Author's Note:**

> I started this for the KidFicStory Big Bang, but didn't finish it in time. Or get long enough. But I did finish it!
> 
> Not beta'd.

Gerard glanced around the playroom with a frown. Something was off. He couldn't put his finger on it, but there was something wrong about this room. It was grey, and sterile, and lit with fluorescent lights that hummed low in his ears. There were small tables and chairs, and a box of toys and a bookshelf, and all of them grey. Blocks, dolls, crayons, books, all grey. Even the shirt and pants that he wore were grey.

But it had always looked that way. The playroom had always been grey, and neat, and lit with the buzzing lights. He had never noticed anything different about it before, but a moment ago, suddenly, he was simply hit by the sensation of _wrongness_ : by the feeling that there was something not right about this room. It wasn't even that the room had changed, because to his eyes it didn't appear to have. Perhaps he was the one who had changed. Perhaps he now saw the old room as wrong, where before he hadn't.

He certainly had never thought about it before, which perhaps was the same thing. Gerard had never thought about any of their living spaces before. He would get up from his bed in the dorm, walk down the hall to the dining room, with its long grey tables and assigned seats, eat his bland, colorless food, and then come to the playroom until lunch. That had been every morning of his life, as far back as he could remember.

But never before had he noticed the colors, or wondered why their seats were assigned, or thought that the food was bland. It was simply food, the way food tasted, for all he had ever known. But now he considered these things, these elements of his day, not as the absolutes they had always been. Now he simply considered them.

Perhaps his mind had been in a fog - he knew the definition, though he had never seen one - and now that fog was clearing. Or perhaps his mind had always been clear, and now it was fogging. No, he was somehow quite sure it was the other way around. He didn't know why, but he simply knew it - as he knew that the food was bland and that the entire world should not be grey.

Surreptitiously, he glanced around the playroom. No one else was looking up from their tables, where each other child played with one toy. They were supposed to play with each of the toys, not just one over and over again, and though he didn't know why - he didn't even know how he knew it - Gerard knew that it was important. And it was important, probably, that he was now noticing these things.

Looking at the other children, he was struck for the first time by the fact that they didn't all look the same. True, they all wore the same grey top and pants, but he had never noticed that their hair and their skin came in different shades. Something made him wonder if their eyes were all different too, but none of them looked up. He had never looked up before either, which was probably why he had never noticed these things before either.

So why, became the question, was he looking up now? Why was he noticing things? Why was he suddenly associating adjectives and judgments upon the world that was all he had ever known? The questions felt strange, rolling around in his mind. He had never questioned anything before, though he knew what they were. Some of the books were about grammar, and explained things like questions and adjectives and such. Gerard had never heard one asked before - had never even thought one himself - and the thinking of them felt a little daring.

Was he perhaps breaking a rule with his looking and his questioning and his judgments? Was that what the strange sensation earlier had been? Was he the one that was wrong? More questions flooded his mind, and Gerard couldn't help but stop stacking his blocks. He couldn't concentrate on his building while all of these thoughts and questions and ideas spun through his mind.

Almost immediately, one of the guards shifted. Gerard saw it out of the corner of his eye, and he knew that his pausing was the cause. He didn't know why he knew, or how he could even identify the other as a guard - that was not a word in their books - but he simply knew it. He tried to continued building, hoping that if he pretended to be having a normal morning, they would stop watching him.

It was hard though, with all of these new thoughts and feelings filling his mind. Gerard had never felt so busy inside, and a small part of him was scared by the idea. Most of him, however, was excited, and a little sad that he had never been excited before in his life, because this emotion was fun! Emotions. Those he had never felt before, and Gerard wanted to revel in them while he could. But he needed to concentrate. He needed to continue stacking the blocks until the guard stopped being suspicious. He needed to put these thoughts out of his mind until after lunch and lessons and dinner. After dinner, while he was supposed to be asleep, perhaps then he could think.

((O.O))

It was a good plan, in his limited estimation, but Gerard didn't make it through lunch. He kept thinking new thoughts, and the fork would stop midway to his mouth, or he would forget to chew, and now the guard was blatantly staring at him. Not that Gerard could see eyes through his white helmet, but as with everything else this morning, he simply _knew_.

After lunch, as the children walked to their lessons, a guard suddenly fell into step beside Gerard. One moment he was in line, and the next moment he had been picked up and was being carried off. He wondered if this had happened before. Certainly he had never noticed another child being scooped off, or a lack or empty space in the bedroom or lunch table or at lessons, but then, he could not honestly say that he had ever noticed _anything_ before this morning.

The guard placed him in a chair - grey, of course - in a small office. A man was sitting behind a desk opposite him, and Gerard met him in the eye. He knew, instantly, though the man's face didn't change at all, that this was the wrong thing to do. This only proved what they had suspected: that he was noticing, knowing, thinking. The man continued to stare blankly, and Gerard continued to study him.

It was the eyes, Gerard finally decided. The man's eyes shifted deep within, even though his face didn't move. Suddenly, he wondered if the man was an android. A computer with a motionless face but eyes that saw and processed everything. He had never seen a computer before, nor an android, but Gerard had the strangest feeling that he was looking at one right now.

Abruptly, the eyes blinked closed, and then the guard was picking him up again. Through more grey corridors, and buzzing lights, and the almost silent footsteps of the person toting him through the halls. Gerard was rightened in another office, much like the first, except that this time it was a woman sitting on the other side. She wore grey, just as the man/android had, but somehow Gerard knew she was different than him. He met her eyes too.

"So it is true," she said flatly.

It occurred to Gerard that these were the first words he had ever heard in his life. It also occurred to him, with the same certainty that he had just felt in the other office, that this was a living human, like himself. "Yes," he found himself saying. He had never spoken before, and the motion was stiff and unpracticed. The sound of his own voice startled him, though before this minute he had never even contemplated what he might sound like. Still, it was a - for lack of a better word - childish voice, and at the moment he felt anything but a child.

He knew things now, beyond the children in the other rooms. Beyond possibly the guard who had escorted him, or the android man in the other room. Not as much as the lady across from him, probably, but more than a child. He felt, physically, like a child, but that wasn't the same thing.

He realized that he had spoken, and that surely the woman would be reacting to this, and he should pay attention again. This was the kind of mind-wandering that had gotten him noticed at play and at lunch, and he needed to avoid it. Refocusing, he found the woman staring at him in shock, or maybe horror. He had many words and ideas and feelings in his mind and it was a little hard to categorize all of them. Possibly she was scared.

"Get rid of it!" She commanded quickly, and then Gerard was being picked up again.

He didn't like her tone, though he couldn't identify why. All he knew was that he didn't want to be _gotten rid of_. Every instinct in his body was screaming against that fate, thought he wasn't sure what it even meant. All he knew now was that he had to escape, somehow. He had to get out, before he was gotten rid of.

Now, as they passed through the halls at the same measured pace, Gerard examined his surroundings. He needed to find a door, or a window - though he had never seen one, he could picture it in his mind now. He had to find some way to escape. The guard held him loosely, as one might a bag of laundry, and somehow Gerard knew that this was a good thing. This was needed for his plan to work.

They arrived at the end of a hall, where another guard stood before a door. His must have done something, or perhaps it was simply the sight of the child, for the new guard nodded and pulled a card from his pocket. It was on a cord and he slid it into a slot beside the door. The door sprung open, and Gerard made a note to check all doors for those slots. He might need to get his hands on a cord card in order to escape.

This hall was the same as the last: long, grey, and completely devoid of doors, windows, or other people. There was a corner, however, which his guard took, and then another. Soon they were twisting their way through a veritable maze and Gerard lost track of the turns. Hopefully the way out would be ahead, and not rely on his memory of their steps.

Another door appeared around a corner, and for the first time, Gerard had hope. This one had a guard, but he also had a small holster on his side. Somehow, he knew that this was a gun, and that it was what he needed. As the guard pulled out his card and reached for the slot, Gerard took his chance. He viciously kicked his guard, who dropped him with a quiet "wooh!" of air. While the other guard's hands were still busy, Gerard scrambled for the gun, grabbing it and squeezing the trigger. It shot through the holster, hitting the door guard in the thigh.

He fell, almost crushing Gerard, but at the last minute the boy let go and slithered away. As soon as the guard was down, clutching his leg, Gerard darted back in, fumbling with the snaps on the holster. He got it free just as arms grabbed him from behind. Wedging the gun between his arm and his side, Gerard fired again, and again he was falling. Glancing back, he saw his guard lying still, a large black blast mark on his chest.

Gerard considered his options. He needed to escape, and he couldn't afford to have another guard behind him. He wasn't sure if this gun killed or only stunned, and he didn't want to kill another person, but something in his brain was pushing him. He _had_ to escape, and now. Closing his eyes, Gerard shot again. Then he collected the door opening card and slipped through the door.

He ran down the hall, and that was something he had never done before! His legs burned and his chest heaved and he felt a little light-headed, but it was _amazing_! He had never moved so much in his life, and the blood pumping through his body was like the boost of energy that he needed to really escape.

This hallway was short, and the door at the other end had no guard, so he was quickly there. Gerard considered the wall before him, and finally found the key slot again. As the door opened, it hit the guard on the other side, and Gerard had to fumble to shoot him without leaving behind his key card.

That taken care of, he glanced around and then gasped. Now he was in a room with several doors: all of them glass. Through the doors he could see a world outside, and somehow he knew it was really _the outside_. He looked for a moment longer, and then he was running again, pushing one of the doors open and breathing _air_ for the first time.

He glanced around, frantically, knowing somehow that opening that door would have alerted the woman in grey to his escape. He had to find a place to hide, to run, to escape. Already his breath was weighing heavily in his chest, and he wondered how much longer he could move quickly, as unused to it as he was.

There, to his right, was a bit of green, and he ran towards it. He had never seen anything green before - hadn't even read the word before - but somehow he knew what it was. And he knew that green things were living things, and he wanted to live.

The green thing was a hedge, he realized, and behind it he almost crashed into a man on a strange contraption. The man was wearing a white jacket, and green leggings, and a green helmet, and he pulled Gerard onto the back of the thing - bike, his brain supplied - before he could blink. A helmet was jammed over his own head, and the man gruffly whispered, "hold on, kid." Gerard clutched him as instructed, the metal and leather of the jacket digging into his fingers.

Before he could think about the fact that he had never heard of those words before, nor should he know what they meant, and feel joy that he was free, and feeling and thinking and experiencing these things for the first time, the bike took off. The roar of the motor and the woosh of the wind over his helmet and the faint sound of gunfire filled his ears and his mind and before he realized it, Gerard fell asleep - his grip on the stranger never loosening.

((O.O))

Gerard woke abruptly, and he panicked for a moment. It was dark, and cold, and he wasn't lying in his bed. Then the memories began to rush back into his mind. He had noticed things, which was bad, and they had noticed him, which was worse, and they had tried to get rid of him. But he had escaped, and found the stranger on the motorcycle.

And that was why he had woken, he finally realized. The motorcycle had slowed almost to a stop, and was crawling through the darkness. Gerard's arms were still wrapped tightly around his rescuer, though his fingers had gone numb. He wasn't sure if that was from the holding on or the cold - he had never felt so cold in his life. Finally the motorcycle stopped, the engine turning off. The silence was large, and a little frightening, and Gerard found himself shrinking back against the seat.

"It's ok, kid," he rescuer said, carefully pulling Gerard's hands from his waist. "Just shake 'em out and they'll be fine in a minute."

He did as instructed, shaking his arms jerkily and then biting his lip as the motions produced pain. He sensed that this was a good kind of pain, but it still made his eyes water. His helmet was removed and Gerard looked around to distract himself from the pain. Without the tinted lens, it didn't seem as dark, and he wondered how late it was. It had been just after lunch time when he had escaped, but Gerard wasn't sure how that translated to the sky being dark. There was a glow, far away, on what his brain supplied was the horizon. And there was a small building beside them, which the stranger was looking at. He had removed his own helmet, and when he noticed Gerard's attention, he smiled. Gerard returned the gesture tentatively.

"Come on," he said, lifting Gerard off the bike. His legs were as shaky as his arms, but a moment later he was being scooped up and carried inside. The man put him down on a chair and then left, returning in a moment with the silent motorcycle. Then he swiftly closed the door, plunging the room into complete darkness. Gerard had never been in a place so dark before; at bedtime, there was always a faint glow from the ceiling that kept it darker than day, but not completely black. He now suspected that the glow had something to do with the surveillance systems. They wanted to watch the kids, even in sleep, and their cameras needed to see. However, despite never having been in such inky darkness before, Gerard felt no fear. He wasn't sure if this was more adrenaline, or if the other man was just exuding some kind of safety vibe, but he waited contentedly as the other shuffled around.

After a long moment, a light turned on. It only cast a fait glow, and the edges of the room were still shadowed, but it was enough for Gerard to see the table and chairs where he sat and his rescuer's face. The man quickly sat down across from him, placing the glowing light on the table between them. "I'm Show Pony," he finally said.

"Gerard."

"What happened?" he asked.

His face was honest, though Gerard had no idea how he could judge that, so as with everything else this day he simply went with the flow, and explained about the noticing, the lady, and his escape. While he narrated his day, Show Pony nodded, or frowned, or made noises that Gerard recognized as sympathetic. He was a good listener, and the boy believed that he really did understand what he had gone through that day.

When he finished, Show Pony reached into his pocket and pulled out a squarish, shiny object. Ripping it open, he handed it over. "Here, eat," he offered.

As Gerard's empty stomach made itself abruptly known, the boy grabbed the food and began to devour it. A bottle of water appeared on the table and he chugged it down too. Neither tasted like the food and water he was used to, but he didn't care. Show Pony handed him another food bar when he finished the first, and then began to speak as Gerard ate.

"I belong to a group," he said, "which our enemies call a terrorist group. We call ourselves freedom fighters. You can decide for yourself which to believe, though you've already taken a large leap to our side simply through your actions today."

He paused, and Gerard nodded tentatively. He wasn't sure if he was expected to speak, and his mouth was full, but apparently the nod was enough, as Show Pony smiled slightly and continued. "The organization that we fight against is called BL/ind. They are the ones who have raised you all your life. We do not know why they raise children in that way - well, we have some ideas, but nothing concrete. However, we believe that children should be raised with love, and choice, and freedom, and not in small grey boxes."

The phrase triggered something in Gerard's mind, and he quickly swallowed his bite. "You've seen the inside?"

Show Pony smiled sadly. "I grew up there, the same as you. And one day, I just realized that everything around me was wrong. I still don't know why - we haven't been able to figure that out - but I just knew that I shouldn't be there. So I escaped." He pulled out another food bar and took a small bite himself. "Their security was a lot less impressive in those days."

They ate together in silence for a moment before another idea occluded to Gerard. "Will they come after me?"

"Yes and no," Show Pony answered. "BL/ind has armies at its command, and they do hunt for our group and for the few children who escape. However, there are places where they will not venture. Far beyond the safety of the city walls, and out into the deepest heart of the desert we can find some safety. It takes a strong kind of person to survive in those places, but we find it preferable to the alternative."

Gerard nodded. He was glad, in a way, that the blind people would be coming after his new friend and the rest of his organization anyway. He wouldn't have to feel bad about putting Show Pony in danger if the man was already a warrior whom they hated. A small knot in his chest that he hadn't realized was there began to unravel.

"Are we at the safe place now?" he asked.

"No, we're several days' ride out. This is just one place to rest for the night. We'll need to be up in the morning, and travel as far as we can before the hottest part of the day hits. Hopefully we should be able to make it to the next safehouse by then. We'll rest, and then when it is cooler we'll set out again."

Gerard vaguely followed that explanation, but something else had occurred to him. "What if another kid escapes, like I did? You won't be there to save them will you? I mean, if you're taking me to the desert, won't they get caught?"

Show Pony smiled broadly, and then leaned over and ruffled Gerard's hair. Until today he had never been touched before, and no one had ever touched his hair. Gerard found the touch comforting, though strange. "I'm not the only one watching, kid," Show Pony said. "There are a couple of us rotating through. Someone else was there within minutes of us leaving."

Really? Gerard tried to picture this. A whole group of people on motorcycles, dressed like Show Pony, in a long line that rotated behind the hedge. It was strange, and kind of funny, and he let out a little giggle.

"That's the spirit!" Show Pony ruffled his hair again before sinking back into his chair. "Now, I know you napped on the bike, but I'm betting you're getting tired again, huh?"

Gerard had noticed his energy starting to slip away, and he briefly wondered if Show Pony had some kind of control over his body, making him hungry and sleepy at the right times. "A little," he admitted.

"Good." Show Pony stood up, pushing his chair back, and Gerard followed suit. "Back here is the safest place," he said, bringing the meager light and showing Gerard the back wall of the small hut. Against the wall were two high platforms - benches, his mind supplied - that were a little narrower than his bed. "Can't sleep on the ground - too dangerous - but up here is safe," Show Pony was saying. He put the light down on a small ledge between the two benches and then hoisted Gerard up onto the nearer one.

As Gerard squirmed around into a laying down position, Show Pony hopped up onto the other bench. They were carved in, slightly, and Gerard wondered if that was to keep anyone from rolling off in the middle of the night. He didn't have a blanket, which he was used to, and as Show Pony turned off the light, he was immersed in the strange, absolute blackness again. Still, he felt better than he could ever remember, excitement and relief overtaking his fear and uncomfortableness.

"Good night, Gerard," Show Pony whispered in the dark.

"Good night," he replied. Within minutes, he was asleep again. He slept like a rock, unmoving even when the drone scuttlebug entered the room a few hours later. But it couldn't detect their life-signs so high up, and Show Pony watched it leave again silently, his blaster unneeded. He slept until Show Pony shook him awake, barely visible in the grey light of the pre-dawn sky.

And when they had relieved themselves behind the building, and eaten another food bar, and he was safely on the back of the motorcycle, helmet in place and fingers wrapped tightly around Show Pony's thin waist, Gerard slept again. Beneath his own helmet, Show Pony smiled. If his body was taking this long to adjust to the real world, it was a very good sign. The Doc would be pleased.

((O.O))

After two more days of riding with Show Pony, Gerard was finally able to stay awake for longer than thirty minutes at a time. Show Pony had assured him that it was usual, and a good thing, but Gerard had still been a bit worried.

And so it was that he was awake when they pulled up to a small, derelict building late in the afternoon. Show Pony cut the engine and pulled off his helmet. "We're here!" he declared with a smile. Gerard slid off the bike and removed his own helmet, having gotten much better at doing both since Show Pony had picked him up three days earlier.

"Hey Show Pony!" a young voice said.

Gerard spun around, and saw a boy roughly his age. He had curly black hair and his face was long. He seemed familiar, somehow, though Gerard couldn't remember actually seeing him before. "Who are you?" he found himself asking.

"Ray!" the other boy replied cheerfully.

"He's about the same age as you, as best as we can figure," Show Pony explained, ruffling Ray's hair. "I pulled him out a few days ago. Literally the day I come back, there you are." he shook his head in a mysterious way.

"We've never had two so close before," a gravelly voice declared, and Gerard spun around again to find the speaker. He was a fairly young man, by Gerard's admittedly inexperienced standards, and his voice didn't fit his youthful face. He was sitting in a chair with large wheels on the side, and somehow Gerard's brain knew that meant that the man couldn't walk. "Something funny happening up there." the man concluded, nodding his head firmly. "Never had two at a time before."

Show Pony shrugged, then smiled reassuringly at Gerard. "Gerard, this is Dr. Death Defying. Doc, this is Gerard."

Though he had never officially met another person before, Gerard somehow knew that he should put out his hand. "Hello," he said timidly.

"Hey kid." The Doc shook his hand for a second and then spun his chair around and started to wheel away. "Welcome to the zones."

((O.O))

"As near as we can tell, the same thing happens every time," Dr. Death Defying explained as both boys ate their dinners. Show Pony had taken back off on his bike, leaving Gerard with the fearsome Doc. "Somehow, one of the little chips they've got in your brains just messes up. It misfires or breaks down or gets zapped somehow. And when that happens, it's like a little switch is flipped, and all the things they've kept from you - all the knowledge and vocabulary and ideas they've kept out - all come flooding in."

Gerard stared at him blankly. That made sense, in some ways, but he still had trouble believing it.

"You know things, right?" The grizzled man prompted. "You see something new and you know what it is, like the word just pops into your brain, right?" Gerard nodded. That was exactly what had been happening. "That's what happened to Pony here, and the other desert rats. They got the motherload of all downloads and suddenly they were people again, disconnected from the system for the first time. And that's what happened to you."

Something was bothering Gerard, and though he didn't want to cause trouble, he had to know. "Show Pony said - before, when we were traveling - that you didn't know what had happened."

"No, we know what's happened, we just don't know _why!_ "

Gerard and Ray stopped eating and listened avidly. Dr. Death Defying smiled grimly and continued his tale. "Once upon a time, people were free. They had their own thoughts and dreams and lives. We don't know how or why things changed, but they did. And now, at least here in Battery City, BL/ind is in charge."

"Battery City?" Ray parroted.

"A giant city. The human factory where Pony found you is right on the edge of it."

"Human factory?" Gerard questioned this time.

"They grow humans in a great factory – that's where you both came from. They manufacture people the way we used to manufacture cans of soup, and when you're old enough to be useful, they toss you out into the city to work and be just another cog in the machine."

Though his brain understood the words and concepts that Dr. Death Defying was referencing, Gerard felt his mind spinning. He couldn't understand why a company would do such a thing, or why the people would let them, or, again, why he was different. For that matter, he couldn’t figure out how the Doc even knew all these things!

"Were you grown in a human factory too?" Ray asked, "Like Show Pony and us?"

Dr. Death Defying grinned, but the look in his eyes was anything but pleasant. "My parents were factory-bred. But I was born free."

((O.O))

A week after Show Pony left, he returned. Gerard heard the bike long before he saw it, and he ran outside to look. Finally, the bike came into sight, beneath a large dust cloud. As it drew closer, Gerard could see an odd shape on the back of the bike. He didn't have long to wonder what it was, however, as another bike soon appeared behind it. "Doc!" he called. Surely Show Pony had to know that he had someone else with him, but it struck Gerard as odd.

A long moment later, Ray and the Doc emerged from the diner, both staring at the approaching bikes. "S'at Lady Grace?" the older man wondered. Gerard had no idea who that was, so he kept silent.

After what felt like forever, the two bikes roared up to the diner and stopped. Show Pony pulled off his helmet almost immediately, and though he smiled absently at Gerard and Ray, the look he shot the Doc was full of concern.

The second biker pulled off their helmet, and Gerard was shocked to realize it was a woman! "Doc, how ya been?" she asked, tossing her hair as it spilled out. It was brown, and curly, and Gerard had a sudden urge to feel it.

"Fine," the Doc grumbled. He grumbled a lot, but Gerard was coming to realize that that was just his way. "Where'd you pick up these two?" he asked.

His words made Gerard look back at the bikes, and for the first time he realized that there were two children perched on them. Show Pony had pulled the helmet off of his boy while the others talked, and now he lifted the small blonde boy down. Immediately he wobbled on his feet, and Gerard, who was closest, held out a hand to him. Grabbing it firmly, the blonde boy wobbled to his side.

"I ran into Lady Grace on the road," Show Pony explained to the Doc. He nodded at the boy on her bike. "Seems he came out two days after Gerard, while we were traveling. I wasn't in place more than an hour when this little roadrat burst through the doors." He nodded at the blond when he said the last, and Gerard felt the grip on his hand tighten.

"We can't take in four!" the Doc complained.

Lady Grace frowned at him. "Where do you suggest they go?" she asked coolly.

"With someone else!" he insisted gruffly. "With you! Bang Ra can take 'em. Or Griffin! I've already got two!"

"Griffin's got five." Show Pony said quietly. "They're coming out almost as fast over in zone three as they are here in two."

"I've got four myself," Lady Grace added, "and how much do you want to bet that my girl's've gotten another while I've been out delivering yours?"

The Doc looked her in the eye for a long moment, then exchanged a glance with Show Pony. "Fine," he growled. "But I won't take no more. Four's well past my limit."

Lady Grace frowned. "Then you'd better hope BL/ind fixes this glitch and stops spitting out kids then," she growled right back. "Cause I don't think they care about your limit."

((O.O))

Later, Gerard would learn that BL/ind hadn't fixed their problem right away. Almost sixty children across the first three zones were disconnected that month. Or, at least, almost sixty escaped. They had no way of knowing how often disconnects happened, or if any children didn't make it out. The few killjoy gangs in zones four and five were hard-pressed to find homes for all the escaped children, and some were even shipped out to shadier homes in the outer zones. In retrospect, he was extremely lucky to have been one of the first; to get to stay with Show Pony and the Doc.

As he grew up, he occasionally met the other kids. They were all roughly the same age, give or take a few years, so it was easy to tell. Helen and Rachel were part of Lady Grace's gang, as were Lionel, Augustus, Julie, and Farrah, and he saw them often. Once he and Mikey had accompanied Show Pony on a mission into zone one and they had met Bang Ra's gang. She was hard, like the Doc, but her group was large - much larger than his. There were a dozen kids about Gerard's age - which they currently figured to be about twelve - and all from the same glitch. There were others, he knew, spread throughout the zones, but he didn't know them then.

They never discovered the cause of the glitch, but BL/ind must have, because about a month later the wave of children escaping ended abruptly. Back to the regular slow rate, the escapees became much more manageable, and eventually the Doc and Show Pony began to take kids in again. Of course, by then Gerard was about fifteen, and almost a killjoy in his own right. Soon he'd pick his name and be sent out into the world to do whatever he wanted to it.

Not that he'd be alone. Ray, Frank, and Mikey would be with him. They'd form their own band of killjoys, and they'd take down BL/ind. At least, that's what Gerard said confidently as they stared up at the stars.

And the new kids looked up to him in awe, the same way he had looked up to Show Pony and the Doc once.


End file.
